Tucson
by La Guera
Summary: A hotel room in Tucson, Arizona is no place for Christmas.


Disclaimer: All recognizable characters, places, and events are property of Eric Kripke, Robert Singer, and Warner Bros., Inc. No infringement is intended, and no profit is being made. For entertainment only.

Written for Squee1123 and SPNholidays on LJ.

John Winchester sat on the bed and watched his children. Dean was sitting, cross-legged, on the floor, trying to interest Sammie in a piece of wrapping paper. It was bright, red foil, and he'd bought it on a whim in a drugstore outside of Tucson, thinking it might cheer up the boys and make it feel more like Christmas, but it hadn't worked. Dean was still quiet and too solemn for a four-year-old, and Sammie kept on crying for a mother that was never coming.

"Lookit the paper, Sammie," Dean crooned, and waved the paper in Sammie's face. Sam followed the color with his eyes and leaned backward in a precarious wobble, the better to follow its progress.

"Make sure he doesn't fall and bump his head, Dean," he said wearily.

"Yes, sir," Dean said promptly, and coaxed his baby brother to sit forward by pulling the paper out of his reach.

It wasn't right, John thought as he scrubbed his face with his hands and studiously avoided looking out the windows, where there was no snow on the ground and the only trees on view were squat, uninviting cacti that reminded him of unearthed bones. It wasn't natural, such unthinking obedience from such a small boy. Sure, he and Mary had raised Dean to mind them, and for the most part, he had, but before, he'd sometimes questioned, sometimes balked, set his feet and dug in his heels and refused to yield until somebody gave him a reason to, goddammit, even if that reason had five fingers attached. He'd been, in other words, a normal kid.

_He can't afford to be a normal kid anymore, John Winchester. In fact, he can't afford to be a kid at all. He got fourteen years added to his age when that demon sucked his mother through the ceiling in a ball of fire. From four to eighteen in the space of five minutes. Hey, presto, ain't that some kind of magic? Except it wasn't the kind of magic you and Mary had told him about in safer times, when you'd read him bedtime stories and promised him that the tooth fairy would come if he remembered to put his tooth underneath the pillow. It's older, bitterer magic, the kind that demands a high price, and which lingers long after the thrill is gone. It's hard knocks and bad juju and just not fucking fair because he never asked for it_.

_You'd take it from him if you could, but it would be as good as murder if you did, because this crusade you're on has no place for fear or hesitation. No place for childhood. You need him to act and think like a man; hell, let's be honest-you need him to _be _a man in Transformer Underoos. The monsters you hunt don't give a damn whether the bones they shatter are adult or not. Blood is blood to them._

Dean held the paper just beyond the reach of Sammie's chubby, spittle-caked fingers, and Sam grunted in indignation. In the wan, diseased light from the lamp on the bedside table, Dean's face was hard and angular, devoid of the youthful delight that should have been there on a Christmas Eve, and he thought he saw a smudge of dirt on one cheek. Or maybe it was a bruise, a souvenir from last night's hunt, when he'd taken a hard corner and sent him sprawling into the rear passenger door. It must've hurt like hell, but Dean had never cried; he'd left that to Sam, who'd done enough wailing for both of them. He'd just sucked in his lower lip, blinked back the tears, and started hunting for Sam's pacifier.

_I'm so sorry, Dean. You deserve a better Christmas than this. You both do._

_Like the ones with Mary in them? Mary loved Christmas, and from November to January, she lived for the season. The day after Thanksgiving, the wreath and holly made their appearance on the front door and on the lintels of the fireplace. A few days after that, the decorations came out of the attic, and she'd sit cross-legged on the floor-just like Dean is sitting now, as a matter of fact-and pore over the box of trinkets. Some of them were simply store-bought balls and ornaments, but some of them were family heirlooms, passed on from her grandmother and great-grandmother. There were handmade, popsicle-stick picture frames from her nieces and nephews, each holding a photo of grinning, cow-licked children, and clay handprints. There were pictures of Mary as a little girl, and even a snowflake made from the chantilly of her grandmother's wedding gown. _

_Sometimes you'd bring her a mug of hot chocolate or coffee and sit beside her while she sorted through the contents and told you the stories behind them. It didn't matter that you'd heard them all before and didn't know Aunt Gertie from Cousin Emmeline. It made her happy to tell them, and it became as much a tradition as tree-hunting or the Christmas turkey that filled the house with mouth-watering aromas all day long on Christmas Eve._

We're going to make our own memories, John, and add them to the box, _she'd say, and snuggle against your chest, mug clutched in both hands to warm them against the chill of approaching winter. You'd murmur your agreement into the softness of her hair, because you knew that Mary was almost always right._

_She was, too. You _did _add memories to the box. There were snowflakes made from wedding invitations and transparent bulbs with pictures from your honeymoon in Miami. There were sonogram photos of both Dean and Sam, and after they were born, there were baby booties hung from the branches, knitted by her mother. There was a scrap of wrapping paper from Dean's first Christmas, when he'd chewed on it and then tried to wear it as a hat. Nothing from Sammie's first Christmas, of course. There's nothing in this shitty room that you'd want to remember it by, and even if there were, there's no box to keep it in. It burned in the fire along with everything else that mattered, all those memories reduced to smoldering ash._

_At least you think it did. You never set foot in that house again after the fire, not even after the fire chief said it was safe to enter. There was nothing left inside it for you, just smoke and wet wood and plaster and tainted memories. You didn't even bother to go back for diapers for Sammie. You just loaded the boys into the car and drove away without looking back. You stopped at an ATM on the way out of town and left Lawrence in the dust. You bought diapers and formula in Wichita and changed a screaming, freezing Sammie on a rest-stop picnic table while a sleepy, frightened Dean rubbed his eyes and tried to figure out when his father had gone crazy._

_Thing is, you couldn't leave the memories behind no matter how far you drove. They have a nasty habit of creeping up on you when you aren't looking. You'll be driving along a rutted backroad with a map spread clumsily over the steering wheel, plotting the quickest route from Point A to Point B, and a memory will come, so hard and unexpected in its clarity that you have to stop the car before you wrap it around a utility pole or drive off an embankment._

_Christmas 1978 found you on the road to Boulder, while you were trying to stay awake by listening to a talk-radio kook who was ranting about little green men in tinfoil underpants. You'd nearly nodded off in spite of his ranting when it hit, and you were so surprised that you yelped and fishtailed over the blacktop. Sammie started shrieking from his carseat, but Dean was still dead out, curled on backseat with his hands between his knees and his chin tucked to his chest. You knew you should reach back and quiet Sammie, but instead you sat with your fingers fisted around the rough, cracked vinyl of the steering wheel and took a trip down Memory Lane._

_Mary was eight months gone then. In fact, Dean would arrive in the world exactly thirty days later, screaming to rival the blizzard raging outside the hospital windows, but that night, she was round and happy, sitting underneath the tree with a cup of hot chocolate and flipping through the pages of a book of baby names. She'd chosen and discarded half a dozen names since she'd found out she was pregnant, and as the time had gotten shorter and the evidence of the baby's imminent arrival appeared-cribs and car seats and the teddy bear wallpaper that had gone up in the spare bedroom-the matter of a name had taken on a new urgency. It was almost a mania with her now, and from morning to night, names tumbled from her lips like prayer beads._

_Just that day, she'd tested dozens of names, tasted them on her mouth and spat them out again. Benjamin had been her favorite while she pressed raisins into the slack doughflesh of unbaked gingerbread men, and Jesse had won pride of place while she decorated their still-warm skin with frosting. By the time you ambled in from the garage with grease on your hands from your latest salvage project, Philip was her choice, but you talked her out of that one. Philip was for accountants and eternal virgins, and you were dead certain your boy would be neither. He was a Winchester._

_That night under the tree, she was writing down possibilities on a legal pad, bottom lip sucked between her teeth in concentration._

What about Thomas? _she asked earnestly, and tapped her ballpoint pen against her chin. _

_You chuckled and took a sip of your beer. _If it makes you happy, _you told her. It was what you said about most of her choices. Except for Philip, that was. A man had to have standards._

_She scowled and reached behind her to pluck a bow from one of the presents arrayed neatly beneath the tree. _That's what you say to everything, _she huffed, and threw the bow at you. It fluttered ineffectually to the carpet a few inches in front of her._

_You held up your hands in mock surrender. _Hey, as long as he's got ten fingers and toes and one head, I'll be a happy man.

You certainly objected to Philip, _she pointed out shrewdly, and took a sip of cocoa._

Yeah, well, what kind of father would I be if I let him go through life with a name like Philip? He'd get wedgies and swirlies every day of his life. I'm just looking out for his future prospects.

Mmm, _she murmured dubiously, and a wicked smile flickered in the corners of her pretty mouth. _And I suppose it's got nothing to do with the fact that Philip wouldn't sound cool or macho when you were working on cars in the workshop.

_You smiled wistfully at the thought of an older son working with you in the body shop you'd opened with Bob Cullen. He'd have your eyes and Mary's hair and dirt smudged on his face like a mark of honor, and he'd love cars as much as you did._

Nah, _you said. _He's not going to have to work with his hands if I can help it. He's going to go to college and get a real chance to make something of himself.

There's nothing wrong with a man with grease under his fingernails, _she said, and then she grinned broadly and rubbed her distended belly. _How else would you explain this? _She happily tapped her belly._

_You got off the couch and joined her on the floor, wrapping your arm around her domed stomach in a gently possessive curl. Dean, who did not yet know his name, shifted under your forearm. _This, _you whispered in her ear, _is because you are gorgeous and irresistible. _You covered her neck and face in butterfly kisses until she shrieked with laughter and swatted your hands away._

John Winchester, stop, _she demanded between giggles._

Hey, I'm just an honest guy, _you protested._

Well, Honest Abe, help me up. I have to pee, _she announced. _And bring me a gingerbread man.

Yes, ma'am, _you said, and gave her a jaunty salute as you helped her to her feet._

How about Dennis? _she called as she waddled towards the bathroom, and you could only laugh._

_The matter wasn't settled until 4:53PM on January 24th, when Dean was a screaming, dirty miracle on Mary's suddenly-flat stomach. _His name is Dean, _you said without thinking, and that was it. His name was Dean, and you brought him home two days later, and to celebrate, you and Bob Cullen raised a toast on your front porch._

_Christmas 1979 paid you a visit at a rest stop in Omaha. You'd been on the road for four days, and Dean was scrubbing his grimy neck and face in an even dirtier restroom sink while you wiped Sammie's ass with cheap paper towels. He had a bad case of diaper rash from sitting in wet diapers for too long. You'd just told Dean to wash his hair in the sink if he could, and when he reached for the soap dispenser, you flashed back to the day that same hand had reached for a shiny Christmas bulb with a child's glee._

_It was Dean's first Christmas, and he was your firstborn, and so you went a little overboard. So had the rest of the family, really. Mary's mother had knitted him more booties and afghans than he could use in a lifetime, and your side of the family had sent toys and stuffed animals. Your father, ever the pragmatist had sent him a savings bond, which was promptly deposited into his college fund._

_Most of the presents under the tree were for Dean, more than you could well afford. There were clothes and other practical things, but most were soft toys-squashy baseballs and quacking ducklings on a string and bears bigger than he was. You and Mary had stayed up late the night before to wrap them all, and your hands were still sticky when tape adhesive when you helped him open them that morning, bleary-eyed and happy and blinking coffee steam out of your eyes._

_The irony was that Dean was more interested in the paper and the bright lights and colors of the Christmas tree than he was in the toys. He toddled past the smiling toys and reached for the blinking lights of the tree with eager, spittle-streaked fingers and tried to pull the decorations from the drooping branches. When Mary thwarted him at that turn, he simply changed tack, plopped into the pile of torn wrapping paper, and picked it up in his chubby fists. He swam in it, shampooed with it, and tried to eat it, and most of the pictures of that Christmas were of him perched happily atop that pile of paper. Those pictures turned to ash the night Mary burned on the ceiling of Sammie's nursery, but the images didn't go away. They just took up residence inside your head._

_Christmas 1982 rose from the ashes in a buffet restaurant in Taos. It was Thanksgiving, and you weren't so far gone in your monster madness that you didn't realize that Dean needed a better meal than a bag of stale peanuts and a bottle of Coke. So there he sat, shoveling the mashed potatoes into his mouth like he thought he'd never see them again and sopping the gravy from his plate with a yeast roll. You considered telling him to slow down and chew with his mouth closed, but given the fact that he was four years old and helping to raise his baby brother, you decided to let it go. So you chewed food you didn't want and couldn't taste and stared at the stuffing that reminded you of the stuffing Mary used to make, the one you swore you'd die for._

_You had a big plate of it that Christmas, and your mouth was already coated with its warm, nutty taste. Dean was asleep and dreaming of sugarplums and dirt piles higher than his head, and Mary was on the floor, wrapping presents and humming "O, Tannenbaum." There were four months and then some of Sammie in her belly, and that he'd be Sammie was never in doubt. Mary had settled on the name the minute she found out she was pregnant, gender notwithstanding, and you'd been making lame Sam and Dean jokes ever since._

Dean ought to love this, _Mary said, and held up the giant Tonka dump truck. She'd filled the back of the truck with Hot Wheel cars. Dean was a car nut even then, and the next morning when he ripped the paper off that truck, you'd have thought he'd died and gone to heaven._

_Less than a year later, those cars would be so much molten metal on the floor of his room, but back then, ignorance was domestic bliss, and so you wrapped presents and ate Christmas cookies and stuffing and speculated on what Sammie's first Christmas would be like when it came. She thought it would be like Dean's, all tidings of comfort and joy, and you wonder now what she'd think if she could see them, her older son in underwear that hasn't been washed in a machine in two weeks, and her baby with chronic diaper rash and no one to soothe him while he teethes. _

_Sammie was born one late night in May, screaming through the caul over his face. Her pretty, sweet Sammie, she called him, and even though it's not something you'd ever admit to Dean, you knew Sammie was her favorite. He was as quiet as Dean had been demanding, and she called him her Mama's boy with a sense of pride. Oh, she loved Dean, and she was never unkind, but Sammie was her quiet place, the one she went to when she needed comfort. It was almost like she knew she wasn't going to have much time, so she made every moment last._

_She follows you everywhere, your Mary, Mary, quite contrary. She's your fetch, as much a restless ghost as the wailing spirits you exorcise with salt and fire. You see her in mirrors and in the darkness behind your closed eyelids, and she is reaching, ever reaching, whether it's for your outstretched hands or for Sammie, you don't know and never will. You want to tell her that you're sorry, that you never meant for any of this, but you're not sure it matters. The business that you built from the ground up is gone, the house that she so lovingly made a home is a hulking shell where no laughter waits, and the sons for whom you both had such high hopes are dirty-necked vagabonds with no place to rest their bones._

_She'd be proud of Dean, though. At least you can say that. He takes good care of Sammie, and you never have to tell him when it's time to get himself and his baby brother out of sight. Most of the time, he knows before you do. He's been looking out for Sammie since the day he was born. Even when Mary was alive and there were no such things as ghosts and werewolves and wendigos, he wanted to touch Sammie and hold him and be a good big brother. _

_The first few weeks of Sammie's life, Dean hovered at the nursery door. He set up his little cars and trucks in the doorway and played quietly, and the minute Sammie stirred or snuffled in his crib, he was up and standing on tiptoe to peek through the bars or reach inside to stroke a tiny hand or foot. You knew when Sammie was crying before he ever really got started because Dean would holler the news at the top of his lungs. You and Mary broke more than one Hot Wheel car in the rush to investigate, a fact that made you short with him more than once, but God knows you're grateful for it now._

An indignant squawk interrupted his train of thought, and he looked up to see Sammie crawling towards Dean and the dangling paper with grim determination. Dean stretched his arm to hold the paper higher, and Sammie crawled into Dean's lap, eyes fixed on the shiny scrap.

"Sammie, quit it," Dean demanded, but he was giggling, and he supported his diapered rump when Sammie heaved himself upright.

Sammie didn't quit. He clawed his way up Dean's shoulders and reached for the paper, one foot planted precariously on Dean's thigh. Dean bowed to the inevitable and surrendered his prize, and Sammie promptly crammed it into his mouth with a crow of triumph.

"Sammie, no," they said in unison, and Dean immediately set about prying it out of his mouth. Sammie, robbed of his hard-won prize, began to wail.

"C'mon, Dean, let's get you and your brother ready for a bath."

"Yes, sir." Dean stuffed the scrap of wrapping paper underneath the hotel bed, got up, and picked up, Sammie, who was still screaming. He was halfway to the bathroom when he stopped and said, "Dad, do I _have_ to take a bath with Sammie?"

"You know you do. It's faster and easier that way." Then, unable to stop himself, "Why?"

"Because he pees in it," Dean answered matter-of-factly, and marched into the small bathroom.

He didn't know whether to laugh or cry, so he did neither. He just helped Dean strip Sammie and goaded them both into the tub. In the harsh, diseased light of the bathroom, he could see that Dean was too thin, and there were deep hollows beneath his eyes. He looked wizened and used up, and he was sure that if he touched him, he'd be too hot, and gritty, brittle beneath the skin.

_Changeling child returned to dust, _he thought nonsensically, and shuddered.

_Think of his teeth, _Mary moaned, and he did laugh then, a shuddering, hiccoughing splutter that was perilously close to a sob.

That was his Mary, always practical, always worrying about the details that mattered. While he'd been off fashioning pie-in-the-sky dreams for a body shop not yet built, she'd been the one to talk to the loan officers at the bank about mortgages and interest rates and home equity. She'd been the one to set up the household budget so that he could make his dreams a reality without starving her and the boys to death. She'd been his rock, the one who known what she was doing, and she was the one who should be here now, not him. She was the one who mattered, and she was the one who could have given the boys a fighting chance.

"Dad?" Dean's voice, far away and frightened. "Daddy?"

"Yeah," he said gruffly, and pried his white-knuckled fingers from the side of the tub. "Yeah, Dean, I'm okay." He swiped his eyes with the back of his hand and reached to turn the tap inside the tub. "That too hot?"

Dean shrugged. "No, sir."

He scrubbed his children in silence. Sammie did pee in the tub, and he secretly wondered if it was in retaliation for the earlier theft of his prize.

Dean's only response was a long-suffering sigh and a glum declaration of, "Gross," and John Winchester felt suddenly mad.

_I'm the Mad Hatter, _he thought stupidly. _Just call me Mr. Mom._ He bit the inside of his cheek to stifle a spate of hysterical laughter that would give way to screams if he let it.

After the bath, he took special care to see that Dean brushed his teeth, and then he chivvied them into bed. Dean grimaced at the rough nap of the hotel bedspread on his skin, but he dutifully made sure Sammie didn't smother himself in the dirty sheets. John sat on the edge of the bed, uncertain of what to do. On Christmases past, he had told Dean the stories of nutcrackers and fairies, but he suspected that those tales would hold little magic for a four-year-old who had crouched on the floorboard of the car while Daddy put a load of silver buckshot in a werewolf's ass. Besides, there was nothing to celebrate. Mary was dead, and there were no stockings hung by the chimney with care. There wasn't even a chimney to hang them by.

Still, the feeling of wrongness persisted, and so he shifted on the bed and reached out to smooth the hair from Dean's forehead. He opened his mouth to say something, _anything_, but Dean spoke first.

"Dad, is Santa gonna find us?" he asked. His eyes were wide and pleading inside his face.

It was such an innocent question that he blinked.

_It's the kind of question that a four-year-old should be asking, _a small, dismal voice reminded him. _It's a helluva lot better than _Is the white lady gonna suck my soul, Daddy?

He felt like crying again. "Sure he is," he managed, but it felt false and hollow in his mouth. "He always finds the good boys."

"How do I know if I'm a good boy?" he asked earnestly.

He had no answer to that, and so he rose from the bed and stooped to pick up the boys' discarded clothes. "I'm going to do laundry down at the coin-op down the street," he told him. "Watch your brother."

"Yes, sir."

He paused at the door, hand on the knob. "You're a good boy, Dean."

_A good boy who tomorrow morning is going to figure out that there is no Santa Claus, because if there were, he'd bring you more than the bag of plastic soldiers I grabbed from the rack at the Eckerd's a hundred miles back. It's not fair, Dean, and I'm sorry, so sorry. _

"'Night, Dad," Dean said, and closed his eyes. Just like a good boy.

He closed the door and locked it behind him. He did go to the coin-op, and he did wash his sons' clothes, but first, he stopped at the liquor store and bought himself a Christmas present, a bottle Four Roses whiskey. While the big, industrial washers scoured grit from ten hotels from his children's clothes, he sat on the curb in front of the laundromat and peeled the seal from the bottle.

"Have yourself a merry little Christmas," he warbled tunelessly, but there was never going to be a Mary Christmas, not ever again, and the realization was bitter in his throat. He unscrewed the cap and took a long pull from the bottle and waited for the taste of Mary's stuffing to fade from his mouth.


End file.
